Governor of Tokyo Shintaro Ishihara is ready for more “disaster” radioactive debris from Tohoku. After having started on Iwate’s debris and scolded the residents to shut up and put up, he is eager to sign the deal with Miyagi Prefecture and bring in Onagawa’s debris to Tokyo to crush, burn, and dump in the landfill in Tokyo Bay.

Reading the Mainichi article linked below, it is clear that the Tokyo government is going to circumvent the pesky residents completely by running the idea of accepting disaster radioactive debris with the Assembly of Special Ward (“ku”) Mayors. There are 23 of these mayors, and as long as they’re OK (they seem quite eager to help out Miyagi and Iwate for some reason), Ishihara will just do it. The Tokyo residents and the Metropolitan Assembly will be bypassed.

To remind you, the company who will do the incineration and burying the ashes in the landfill is Tokyo Rinkai Recycle Power, a TEPCO subsidiary receiving subsidies from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Ministry of the Environment and sweetheart land deal with the Tokyo Metropolitan government. Perfect regulatory capture.

Regarding the slow progress of wide-area processing of the disaster debris from the March 11 earthquake/tsunami, it has been revealed that the Tokyo Metropolitan government and the Assembly of the Special Ward Mayors have been discussing the acceptance of disaster debris from Onagawa-machi in Miyagi Prefecture. The formal decision may be made by the end of this month. If Tokyo accepts the debris from Onagawa, it will be the second such case since the debris of Miyako City in Iwate Prefecture.

According to the secretariat of the Special Ward Mayors, they have been discussing the acceptance of flammable plastics since October at the request from Miyagi Prefecture. The disaster-affected areas have debris that exceed the areas’ capacity to process, but concerns of radiation contamination has so far prevented the wide area processing outside Tohoku. The Secretariat of the Special Ward Mayors says, “If there is no place that would accept the debris, there will be no recovery for the disaster-affected area. We would like to listen to the residents [of Special Wards] and decide.”

If the Assembly of the Special Ward Mayors agree, the Tokyo Metropolitan government plans to sign an agreement with Miyagi Prefecture. The Tokyo government signed the similar agreement on September 30 with Iwate Prefecture, and has announced that 500,000 tonnes of debris from Iwate and Miyagi will be accepted in Tokyo in two and a half years until March 2014.

Listening to the residents is as democratic as listening to the residents when a nuclear power plant is being planned; the meetings will be filled with government shills who will support the idea while expressing some concern for the safety. A farce.

Governor Ishihara is also calling the prime minister of Japan “incompetent” over the prime minister’s inability, in his view, to explain the difference between the disaster debris and the radioactive debris. (From Sankei Shinbun 11/8/2011 article; Sankei is a paper whose editorial include gems like “Let’s share the pain“.)

Here’s where Onagawa-machi, Miyagi Prefecture is located on Professor Hayakawa’s map (blue circle):

… these are not “dosimeters” but “glass badges” that passively collect radiation information. It won’t help these children or their parents to avoid high-radiation areas and spots, it won’t tell them how much radiation they will have been exposed unless they are sent in to a company to interpret the data.

Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion. Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that’s the danger.

Yo: So making comparisons with X-rays and CT scans has no meaning. Because you can breathe in radioactive material.

Hirose: That’s right. When it enters your body, there’s no telling where it will go. The biggest danger is women, especially pregnant women, and little children. Now they’re talking about iodine and cesium, but that’s only part of it, they’re not using the proper detection instruments. What they call monitoring means only measuring the amount of radiation in the air. Their instruments don’t eat. What they measure has no connection with the amount of radioactive material.

Dr. Helen Caldicott (Co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility):

You’ve bought the propaganda from the nuclear industry. They say it’s low-level radiation. That’s absolute rubbish. If you inhale a millionth of a gram of plutonium, the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose. Most die within that area, because it’s an alpha emitter. The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged. Years later, that person develops cancer. Now, that’s true for radioactive iodine, that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia. It’s imperative … that you understand internal emitters and radiation, and it’s not low level to the cells that are exposed. Radiobiology is imperative to understand these days.”